Cast of Wonders will be moving its RSS feed to LibSyn at the end of October. And soon after, our episodes should be available on Spotify.
For 99% of our audience, the transition should be transparent – tech things will happen behind the scenes, and your podcatcher will continue to receive new episodes every week. If you’re using a hand-crafted podcatcher, you may need to update your feed location.
We’ll keep you posted as the change approaches.
Genres: Modern Sci-Fi, Science Fiction
The day Michael came back to school, I was still wearing long sleeves.
Not because of the bruises. That’s what everyone thought, but the truth was, the bruises had faded weeks before. I didn’t know why I was wearing them myself, until Michael slunk through the front doors, and everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at him.
Genres: Science Fiction
The library hadn’t been there the day before, Ella was sure of it. That patch of dirt beside the rusting piles of spaceship debris outside the refugee camp had been bare, with nothing but weeds and rocks on it. Now, there was a library there. She knew it was a library because it said LIBRARY right on it, painted in glittery letters. The word was spelled out in the twelve most commonly spoken languages and dialects in the camp. Ella recognized them all from school, even if she could only read and understand five of them. .
The building was small and rectangular. It looked like a brightly painted version of one of the metal shipping containers Ella would see at the spaceport when she went there with her friends to scavenge for leavings. Of course, you weren’t supposed to go scavenging there, but everyone did anyway. You could find anything there – scraps of metal and junky electronics for the trader, even food, if you were lucky.
Ella squinted at the library’s sign. She was supposed to come straight home after school, but school had ended early since the power went out, and Pappa wouldn’t notice she was gone until later. And who had ever heard of anyone offering books around here? Better take the chance when it was offered.
Ella opened the door and stepped inside.
(Continue Reading…)
Genres: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy
I saw her van as I turned the corner by the convenience store. It was exactly as I remembered it: the coat of green paint cracked and faded now, but the logo unmistakable. It was burned into my memory like a brand.
I moved before I even realized my old instincts were kicking in, pressing myself against the brick wall and slowing my breathing so the sound would not give me away.
Every nerve in my body tingled. I watched. I waited.
(Continue Reading…)
Genres: Urban Fantasy
GEORGE, JC—THE RUNAWAY PRINCE—J FIC GEO 1994
You’d think it would make us happy when a kid checks out the same book a zillion times in a row, but actually it just keeps us up at night.
The Runaway Prince is one of those low-budget young adult fantasies from the mid-nineties, before J.K. Rowling arrived to tell everyone that magic was cool, printed on brittle yellow paper. It’s about a lonely boy who runs away and discovers a Magical Portal into another world where he has Medieval Adventures, but honestly there are so many typos most people give up before he even finds the portal.
Not this kid, though. He pulled it off the shelf and sat cross-legged in the juvenile fiction section with his grimy red backpack clutched to his chest. He didn’t move for hours. Other patrons were forced to double-back in the aisle, shooting suspicious, you-don’t-belong-here looks behind them as if wondering what a skinny black teenager was really up to while pretending to read a fantasy book. He ignored them.
The books above him rustled and quivered; that kind of attention flatters them.
(Continue Reading…)
Genres: Modern Sci-Fi, Science Fiction
The school library doesn’t have the book you want. No surprise there. There are a few dozen volumes on its shelves; plenty of other books are out there in the cloud, but the part of the cloud with your book is partitioned off too. It’s in the Premium Access tier and a Title X school in Ass-Nowhere, Wisconsin is not exactly Premium Access quality. The librarian apologizes for that, but apologies don’t put the words in your hands.
(Continue Reading…)
Genres: Fantasy, Modern Fantasy
It was during the particularly frozen-solid Prince George winter of ’91, a few days after the new neighbours had arrived, that I first stumbled into the Penelope Qingdom.
“What are their names?” I asked my moms as they bustled about the kitchen getting ready. They’d invited themselves next door for a “Welcome to the Neighbourhood” dinner. We’d never had new neighbours before.
(Continue Reading…)
Genres: Science Fiction
Buy the full-length novel from Amazon!
The Xenoid hadn’t tried to cover up evidence of its theft.
Her raft had been dragged out from behind the fungi bush and now lay on the white sand beach. Many of its locker doors hung open, their contents spilled on the floor. There was a gouged-out space on the control console where the computer had been.
It’d probably planned to use the raft after eliminating her, Cy guessed confidently. But, being a calculating creature, it had to secure the computer’s memory module when it had the opportunity. It represented a prize too invaluable to risk to the chance of failure.
(Continue Reading…)
Genres: Science Fiction
Buy the full-length novel from Amazon!
For a moment she puzzled over why the plants up ahead had all turned white and were sparkling under the sun.
Then, in a single step she left the warmth of the day and entered the cold of the island. A sudden, severe plunge in temperature, far colder than she’d ever known – colder still than the day she’d run, bare-footed and exposed, across the sands of Mars.
(Continue Reading…)
It has come to our attention, through multiple channels, that the current incarnation of Artemis Rising 5 has caused harm to members of our community.
Thanks to Bogi Takács’s eloquent explanation of how to bring more voices to the table, we are examining the best way to repair the trust we’ve broken. We appreciate the conversations happening on various platforms and thank you for allowing us to participate in them.
Artemis Rising’s aims have always been to highlight the work of underrepresented genre authors and provide training and progression opportunities to junior members of the Escape Artists family who are members of traditionally marginalized groups. The underrepresented groups that we’ve chosen to focus on have changed over time and are likely to continue to change from year to year.
This year, we failed to consider the effect this change would have on people who were previously eligible to submit but were not eligible this year.
Artemis Rising’s submission portals will remain open and stories are being read while we consider how best to move forward, but we feel it is imperative to urgently acknowledge our mistake.
We apologize for the exclusion and hurt caused by this year’s call. We appreciate the feedback we’ve received; to everyone who voiced their objections, thank you for giving us a chance to correct our error. We hear you.
Escape Artists editors
Escape Pod: S.B. Divya & Mur Lafferty
PseudoPod: Shawn Garrett & Alex Hofelich
PodCastle: Jen R. Albert & Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali (and assistant editor Setsu Uzume)
Cast of Wonders: Marguerite Kenner
The 2018 Artemis Rising editors
Escape Pod: S. Kay Nash & Laura Pearlman
PseudoPod: Cecilia Dockins & Tonia Thompson
PodCastle: Krystal Claxton & Elora Gatts
Cast of Wonders: Amy Brennan & Karissa Sluss
Genres: Science Fiction
Buy the full-length novel from Amazon!
The map in her hand now showed only the blue-green of the sea. Apparently there was nothing but ocean ahead for the foreseeable future.
“Plain sailing form now on, Lazarus,” she said, turning to look for the spider, but could see it nowhere.
(Continue Reading…)
With a whisper of magic, the portal begins to open. Travel through, fellow wanderers, and tell us of the stories you find.
Submissions for Cast of Wonders’ Flash Fiction Contest will run from September 1-30, 2018, via Submittable.
To be a valid submission to the contest, each story must adhere to the following rules:
Please blog, share on Facebook, tweet, email, send owls, telephone, text, light smoke signals, and otherwise get the word out.
